SEND US NEWS TIPS!
blog@nypress.com






ENTERTAINMENT



BEST NIGHTCLUB REMODELING

Best Beatdown
Jeff Koyen vs. N. Scott Stedman

The "N" is for ’nocked-out. It started as these things always start: with a taunt. In the June 11 issue of New York Press, we called the floundering fledgling L magazine "dreadful." We’d just launched our sister paper, New York Sports Express, and both publications were to be distributed in orange boxes. We didn’t–and still don’t–expect the Dumbo-based L to survive very long, so we offered to buy their boxes for pennies on the dollar.

The boys of L, in an attempt to capitalize on the diss, challenged us to a soccer match.

How gay.

L magazine is everything that New York Press despises. First, there’s the limp-dick writing. From the opening page that cites Walter Benjamin to the shockingly weak descriptions of everything from walking tours to DJs to art installations, wasting so much space on so much neutered prose is a crime in an age when print should be rising above.

Then, there’s the "Neighborhood Guide." Though readers are informed in agate that these back-of-book pages are "sponsored" by advertisers, the fact that they are identical in design and layout to the presumably non-sponsored reviews causes us to cry foul. It’s our opinion that the editors are trying to deceive the readers by not being more clear in the division between paid and unpaid editorial. This is unacceptable.

Then there’s the whole p.r. thing. Stedman admitted to us that he hired a public relations firm to capitalize on the "feud." More than anything else, this dot-com approach to publishing makes us want to beat the living fuck out of the L crew. We thought the p.r.-before-product mentality had disappeared, and we’d taken comfort in the fiscal and professional demise of 25-year-old "new media" rockstars who spent more time posing for photo ops than producing anything good for the world. Their legacy survives in Stedman.

The pussies at L declined our counteroffer of a bare-knuckle fistfight, so on Wednesday, October 29, New York Press/New York Sports Express editor-in-chief Jeff Koyen will take on Scott Steadman at Gleason’s Gym. Yeah, yeah, we know that Koyen originally declined a boxing match, calling it a bit precious and citing celebrity boxing matches for their despicability. But now that he’s been training for two months and has thrown a fair number of punches at large black men, he’s ready to beat the tar out of the wispy Steadman.

Last we spoke with the noodle-armed N. Scott, he had more to say about his trainer’s stories and his brother’s independent film and the "after party" than the match itself. Clearly, our disgust and animosity failed to register, so we urged him to start training more seriously, lest Koyen be demonized for picking on the nerdy kid in the playground.

Yet he still doesn’t understand the beast awakened. Expect a bloodbath.

Best Nightclub Remodeling
Quiznos Subs
19-23 St. Marks Place (betw. 2nd & 3rd Aves.), 212-253-8444

’Scuse me while I toast this rye. What during the 1990s was a rehab center smack dab in the middle of St. Marks Place, north side, was once the site of important New York music venues of yesteryear. In the 60s, at 23 St. Marks were the Electric Circus and Andy Warhol’s Dom club. A couple of rock bands you might have heard of played here…like the Velvet Underground and the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

The development company that bought the space is more interested in doing to the East Village what’s been done to Soho than they’re interested in neighborhood history. The first tenant is a national sandwich chain, Quiznos Subs, and boy doesn’t that get us as mad as–

Oh, crap. Who’s kidding who? St. Marks has been culturally irrelevant for 30 years, so who really gives a fuck if there’s a sandwich shop where Hendrix once banged Janis Joplin and then banged a fat load of heroin into his arm? Only children and nostalgists–and childish nostalgists most of all–claim that the good old days of rebellion should exist anywhere but in our memories. Those who refuse to accept the corporatization of New York City are doomed to be miserable. We’re not supporting the commodification and branding of everything we’ve held precious, but neither are we mired in bitching and moaning and Ohmigod, can you believe there’s a Madame Tussaud’s where the old Harris was?

Like single-cell organisms, like weeds, like roaches, like Challenger jokes–counterculture springs up of its own accord. It doesn’t need fertilizer. Nor does it need a museum erected on soil once so fertile. It will take root somewhere else, always somewhere else, and just because you’re too old and stiff and stuck in the past doesn’t mean it’s not there. You just don’t understand it, old man.

And furthermore, we’ll take Quiznos over another stupid t-shirt shop any day of the week.

Best Party to Get Blunted At
Deep Space
Cielo, 18 Little W. 12th St. (betw. Washington St. & 9th Ave.), 212-645-5700

They call it stormy Monday. Despite its being on a Monday night, Francois K’s Deep Space party is filled every week with folks throbbing to the Frenchman’s eclectic selection of dubby cuts. Mr. K, of Body and Soul fame, has the most interesting, if not the best, fiesta in the city going right now, with Rasta mons grabbing the mic to lead you on a spiritual journey to find your blunted soul and spacey grooves that keep you moving all night.

Don’t be intimidated by the party’s location: Cielo. Although on most nights it hosts a jet-set of Euro-trashers and people with too much money, dressed in designer labels, this party asks that you come as you are. Jah cigarettes are discouraged inside the club, but it doesn’t hurt to load up beforehand. The drinks inside will eat your paycheck. Dress to sweat your bum off.

Best Free Drug
Gymnopilus spectabilis

Manhattan’s magic mushroom. We’ve found this large, robust and mildly hallucinogenic yellow-orange mushroom growing in clusters on stumps and dead trees in Central Park, Van Cortlandt Park, Cunningham Park and other areas of mixed woods hereabouts. We were recently told that the strain growing around here will get you high, but the ones in California won’t; we were able to catch a pretty good buzz from the handful we choked down.

Legend has it that G. spectabilis earned its nickname, "the big laughing mushroom," when a group of itinerant Japanese Buddhist monks came upon a group of nuns rolling around on the road, laughing boisterously. When asked what was so funny, the nuns could only giggle and point to the leftover mushrooms in their cookpot. They must have been hungry: The fungus tastes like Ivory soap, and the concentration of the psychoactive ingredient is pretty small. You’ve got to want it.

As with all wild mushrooms, making a positive identification can take some investment of time and effort. An overeager novice might, for instance, mistake Omphalatus olearius, the poisonous "jack o’ lantern" mushroom, for the sought-after ’shroom of dreams–in which case, it’s a bout of painful cramps and trip to the emergency room for a stomach pumping. With luck. Please, check a few mushroom field guides and get confirmation from an expert before you chomp.

Best Music Venue
Irving Plaza
17 Irving Pl. (15th St.), 212-777-6800

Headbangers ballroom. We refuse to accept that every act we’ve seen at Irving Plaza just happens to be superior. Whether the stage is filled with the aimless stomping of a punk band like Zebrahead or the understated big band melodies of Keely Smith, not a single show we’ve seen at Irving has sucked.

Okay, maybe that’s the beer and whiskey talking, but Irving Plaza is still the best venue of its size in the city. The owners have yet to succumb to the Clear Channel monopoly and do their best to offer cheap tickets for headliners like No Doubt, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Donnas. Sure, we’re fans of Knitting Factory, Southpaw, Mercury and Maxwell’s, who usually find a respectable balance between profit and respect for fans, but Irving has it down to a science.

We particularly admire the way Irving hosts two-night runs. One show is usually 16- or 18-and-over; the other, for legal drinkers only. Adult swim nights are typically sedate, with the jaded flocking to the bar, opening a tab and relaxing beneath the eclectic light-fixtures. You’ll find them staring up at the tiled ceiling, resting their aging bones until the band plays their favorite song.

We dare say that no other venue could pull off a night of Christian rockers Stryper, with KMFDM, Pig and Bile scheduled for the next month and then, three weeks later, three nights of Dark Star Orchestra. Something for everyone, as they say, and we’re big fans.

Best Foosball
Luna Lounge
171 Ludlow St. (betw. Houston & Stanton Sts.), 212-260-2323

Table soccer to you. On a speed binge in a small town outside of Bratislava, we went up against two Slovaks in a game of foosball. As outsiders not quite welcome in the room, we were a little worried. Our table skills were lacking; these kids had been playing for the whole of their short lives.

In other parts of the world, foosball isn’t the fratboy pastime it is in the U.S. It’s more like darts to England: an integral part of a bar culture that’s in turn integral to the whole culture. They take their games seriously in Eastern Europe, and are fond of badgering foreigners into wagers, the terms of which may not be clear.

Then there are the customs. Where we traveled, it’s worse than just pedestrian to spin the handle (and thus spin the men). Do it once, get a sharp look. Do it twice, a gutteral curse. Continue to offend your opponents, and you may end up in a brawl. If they shut you out 10 to nil, you are expected to crawl under the table. The ultimate humiliation.

We brought home our fondness for one-on-ones playing with a drink resting precariously at the edge of the table (which also serves to discourage table-lifting). When we’re in the mood for a match, we head down to Luna where a dollar buys a game and a five buys a pint. The action on the table is good, and there’s plenty of room to maneuver.

If you ever challenge us, though, be prepared to follow our rules. Spinning is for pussies, and best be prepared to get on your knees. For the record, we took those Slovaks in the second game.

Best Low-Hassle Dead-of-Winter Getaway
Isla Mujeres, Mexico

Don’t tell anyone. Late February. Freezing rain for weeks. Alternately confused, depressed and angry, we wanted nothing more than to sun ourselves to a crusty bronze and avoid other humans. So we took a chance on Isla Mujeres.

"Chance," you wonder? Well, Isla’s proximity to Cancun–eight clicks by ferry boat–doesn’t exactly sync up with the notion of getting away from it all, now does it? We overcame our jitters with a little help from some old-timers on Lonelyplanet.com’s Thorntree board (worthy of its own "Best of" award for no-bullshit travel advice). Too good to ignore were their promises of turquoise waters, immaculate beaches and degrees of quietude ranging from "stone-silent stillness" on the island’s western tip to "low, but bearable buzz" in its small main town at the other end. Most persuasive of all was the assurance that encounters with loud-talking, Teva-footed gomers would cease the minute we left the Cancun airport.

The old-timers knew of what they spoke. Isla Mujeres is a narrow strip of Mexican joy straight out of the Corona ad. Bearing in mind its proximity to the States, it remains in a relative sense, undiscovered. Had we cared to, we could’ve snorkeled or gotten our scuba certification or swum with dolphins or sharks–Isla’s full of that kind of thing.

But no thanks. A few four-on-four hoops games with the locals was all the human contact we needed (there’s a lit basketball court in town). Yeah, there were gringos and gringettes to be found, but they were mostly there on post-Cancun detox and too hung over to fuck with our tranquility. Isla Mujeres is no Tahiti. But cheap peak-season accommodations (a good beachside room can be had for $65), delicious food and an absence of annoyance do go a long way with us. At less than four-hour’s flying time from JFK (plus a 15-minute ferry ride) it’s a darn convenient option–one we’re sure to exercise again when the doldrums set in.

Best Anything-Goes Open Mic
Faceboyz
Sundays at Collective Unconscious 145 Ludlow St. (betw. Stanton & Rivington Sts.), 212-254-5277

Freakz. Sure, we suppose you could shell out $15 at some legit comedy joint to drink $7 Heinekens and watch Tonight Show veterans tell Schwarzenegger jokes.

Better to pick up a 40-ounce and drop $3 in the hat to keep a black-box L.E.S. performance space alive and laugh to the most original and unpredictable comedy show in New York. Every Sunday, Faceboy and a rotating stable of beautiful freaks and straight stragglers take the open stage to drop weird science and believe-it-or-not routines. Sign up and take the dive or just byob and watch; Faceboyz Sundays commands a visit.

(Breaking news: We’ve learned the Collective Unconscious has plans to shut the doors as of December 1. We’ll keep you updated as the situation develops.)

Best Contemplation of Jailbait
Lunatarium
10 Jay St. (John St.), Dumbo, 718-813-8404

Grass on the infield. It’s Saturday at 3 a.m. and we know we’re drunk. Our friends have all gone home to be couples, but we’re left, wretchedly alone, still desiring some kind of crazy nightlife or action. More booze, maybe, or someone to kiss. Some extension of the evening’s adventure. Yeah, we know we’re too old for this. We should just go home and pass out in front of the tv with a can of peanuts in our lap. Instead, we wander down Jay St., toward the water where we know that Lunatarium usually has something going on.

As usual, it’s packed with raver-kids in baggy pants twirling glo-sticks and dancing like idiots. Off to one side there’s some stupid skater-type juggling flaming batons with a lack of precision that really makes our heart race. Someone else is making a finger-painting on a dirty mattress while dazed 16-year-olds try not to look awkward. The music’s loud and obnoxious, and the sweat and heat are disgusting, but–wandering into the corner of the room with our plastic cup of beer, we come across a trio of them.

Lovely, poised, elegant. Totally out of place. Now this may just be the twelve-pack talking, but they have got to be the most beautiful people we’ve ever seen. And when we move closer and see them silhouetted against the East River and the Manhattan skyline, we’re convinced it’s love. Or something.

We head over, slur out something about the view and a conversation ensues we’re only half aware of, and there is a gnawing wondering of morality in the back of our minds. Should we ask how old they are? Is it better not to know? Can we really overlook the fact that they think this is the "coolest place in the city"?

We don’t remember what we decided, but in the morning we’re back at home alone, splayed out on the couch with a can of peanuts upside-down in our lap and QVC blaring at top volume.

Best Dose of Died-Young Angst
Egon Schiele at Neue Galerie
1048 5th Ave. (86th St.), 212-628-6200

The horror. Today, Egon Schiele would probably be an insufferably quirky web designer, and his patron-mentor, the great Gustav Klimt, would be teaching multimedia at SVA. Fortunately for the betterment of mankind, both were dead before the 1920s were over: the 55-year-old Klimt fell to pneumonia on Feb. 6, 1918; Schiele, several months later on Halloween. The latter was a mere 28 years old, taken by influenza three days after his wife met the same fate.

Schiele left behind a modest treasure of portraits and landscapes that continue to influence artists. He presents his subjects in tortured twists, their hands tight and locked, many women with their privates exposed and far-removed from the accusations of "immorality" and "seduction" that landed him in jail for 24 days. His self-portraits are exercises in self-deconstruction–sometimes agonizing, sometimes whimsical, other times in between. They’re instantly familiar to anyone who’s ever seen Aeon Flux.

Anyone interested in digging into the soul of man–and woman–without regard for puffery or pretty baubles should see firsthand the work of this Austrian Expressionist. Locally, the Neue Gallerie offers a modest selection of Schiele’s work. Stop by Sunday afternoon after a crisp autumn walk through Central Park and soak up some good, old-fashioned tortured-artistry. Being dedicated to German and Austrian art, the Neue also has a nice selection of Schiele’s predecessors and peers–Max Beckmann, Otto Dix and the aforementioned Klimt.

When you’re done, stop in at Cafe Sabarsky on the ground floor, named for Neue co-founder Serge Sabarsky and loosely modeled after a Viennese cafe. There’s also the requisite museum gift shop, but we can’t recommend buying reprints of Schiele’s work. Simply come back when you need another dose.

Best Double Features
Film Forum
207 W. Houston St. (betw. 6th Ave. & Varick St.), 212-727-8110

Let’s play two. For almost seven years, we’ve been a member of this venerable nonprofit (which gets us in for $5), and we savor the arrival of every calendar in the mail. They’re always getting their hands on gorgeous new prints of something or other, whether it’s Rear Window or Chinatown. Film Forum’s popcorn is the best in the city, and if you’re hankering for something sweeter, try a Cheryl Kleinman cake or a Toblerone bar.

Even more compelling are the double features: two films for the price of one. In this day and age, it’s a hard concept to grasp, but it’s the god’s honest truth. Recent pairings: William Wyler’s The Desperate Hours with Detective Story; Dr. Strangelove with A Shot in the Dark; Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be with The Shop Around the Corner. A few summers ago, there was a lesbian vampire double feature. We brought tons of friends and ignored the men who looked like they were playing hooky from Tech Support.

Best Place for Socially Inept, Geeky Male Writers to Stand Around in Circles without Actually Speaking to One Another
Any New York Press Editorial Party

Four virgins walk into a bar. Writers are interesting creatures. On paper, we’re the bravest bastards on the planet. An article accusing the Crips of being a gay social club? No fear–publish it. But stick us into a social situation where we have to actually interact with humans, and watch our over-inflated pitbull mentalities shrivel up like a Polar Bear Club member’s penis in February.

The best place to see this behavior on display is at our own editorial parties–or Sausage Fests 2003, as they’re affectionately known among local bartenders. It can be hilarious watching a group of writers struggle to get up the nerve to talk to one another.

"Umm… Hey… Umm… How’s… er… How’s it goin?"

"Good. Who do…uh… Who do you know here?"

"Koyen."

"Yeah, me too."

And then the two nitwits go back to staring at their shoelaces and the long silence resumes. Thank god we serve alcohol at these things to get the conversation moving or it would be like singles night for gay narcoleptics.

Best DJ Who Should Be Producing
Junior Vasquez

Do go gently. He alienated Madonna when he remixed a message on his answering machine from the Kabbalah queen ("Junior? Junior, are you there? It’s Madonna?")–even if it wasn’t really Madge’s voice on the actual recording. But he was Junior. The Man. The mixmaster who produced some of the biggest dance songs of the 90s, the DJ who single-handedly transformed the old Sound Factory into a melting pot of drag queens, uptown voguers, Chelsea muscle boys and glowstick-waving ravers. With a scene that didn’t even get going until 8 on Sunday morning and sometimes went into Monday, Junior helped establish the city’s reputation as the club center of the universe.

This was our church, and we were his acolytes. Even then, however, the Master (as he was already calling himself) was given to temper tantrums–like stopping the music for a few minutes if he didn’t think the dancers were paying enough attention. But we put up with it because there was no one else like him.

Junior learned his craft at the feet of Larry Levan, mythical sorcerer of the Paradise Garage, and we lived for moments when he sampled the backbeat of a song like "Street Life" in and out of Mary J. Blige’s latest. When Sound Factory morphed into Twilo, Junior was back with his towel dancers, a seven-foot drag vamp named Kevin Aviance and his signature dubbing of deep house into a trippy vibe. Only this time he had his own DJ booth and private bathroom (soon to become his standard demands).

When Twilo fell victim to GHB fallouts, Junior moved over to the city’s largest club, Exit, where he began his anti-drug crusade and tirades from the booth. He called his Sunday morning party Earth, but for most, Pure Hell would’ve been a better name. The Gestapo tactics of his special security force, who inspected the inside of women’s thongs, intruded upon male patrons and forced open the doors of toilet stalls, eventually turned off even the most avid Juniorites.

The nadir of his spinning career occurred during Miami’s White Party weekend, in which the crowd was so incensed by his antics that they bombarded the DJ booth with water bottles. Having alienated every other DJ in town with snide asides on his website and in the press, Junior, now in his mid-50s, just celebrated another birthday in exile at the Roxy. The Roxy!

And so the question hangs over the dance floor: Is the party finally over? We hope so. Junior should get back into the studio where he belongs, and leave the journeyman DJing to the young bucks.

Best (and Only) Classy Comedy Club
Carolines on Broadway
1626 Broadway (betw. 49th & 50th Sts.), 212-757-4100

I’m pretty sure I saw this guy on tv once. Most people avoid comedy clubs for two reasons. The first: They never know what they’re going to get. Might be an unknown genius, or you might have been better off saving the $15 cover and watching Comedy Central. The second is that you might find yourself singled out by a jackass on stage whose idea of humor is ridiculing you for having been born in New Jersey.

Carolines on Broadway has more or less solved both of these problems. It’s a headliner club, which means you go there to see a specific comedian. If you want to see Dave Chappelle or Mark Maron, you can buy tickets to see Dave Chappelle or Mark Maron. You will not be subjected to the owner’s wife or the "comedian" who stood outside the club distributing fliers or a walking catastrophe whose only reason for being on stage is that he cajoled 20 friends into seeing him. You’ll see the comedian you paid to see. Also, Carolines is a huge space, more like a theater than a typical comedy club, making it rare for a comedian to address individual audience members.

Quality and civility don’t come cheaply. Carolines charges about double what you pay at Manhattan’s comedy shacks. Depending on the headliner, it’s worth the expense.

Best Revival of a Lost Movie Tradition
Freddy vs. Jason

Get ready to die, punk. The first time we walked by the poster in the subway, we stopped, rubbed our eyes and pumped a fist in the air. We saw all the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street movies as a kid in the 80s, and here was the ultimate battle between the baddest two supernatural villains around. And they’re still on the side of evil!

In an age in which the Terminator is an avuncular quip-machine and Wes Craven has turned the horror industry into an offshoot of wacky teen comedy, here was a return of honest-to-goodness machete-through-the-skull and knife-glove-through-the-guts horror.

More than that, Freddy vs. Jason also signifies the return of the lost "ultimate match-up" genre, the Dracula vs. Frankenstein and Godzilla vs. Mothra tradition kept alive in recent years mostly in small-screen video games. There is something very cool about plotless, decontextualized battles between two great characters. Remember Kareem Abdul-Jabar versus Bruce Lee in Game of Death? Even if you don’t, and even if you missed Freddy vs. Jason, that’s okay. We’ll explain everything when we meet you in line for Alien vs. Predator.

Best Neighboring Borough
The Bronx

No news to C.J. On one short trip, you may see a bodega, a car wash and a castle. The breakfast of choice on a 90-degree day is hot chocolate, and though we always decline sugar in our coffee, some always seems to make its way into our cup. We’re blond, so people say, "Good morning, teacher," or gently inquire: Are we looking for the school?

There’s fresh challah on Fridays and pans of barbecued everything coming out of kitchens. There are fancy pastries with guava or custard, and the beckoning of fried street food. There’s salsa in the street. There’s a subway packed with workers heading here, to jobs in schools and medical facilities and city posts. There’s the occasional daytime drama–an attractive, well-coiffed woman in a stylish leather jacket and gold jewelry banging her hands flat against the token booth plexiglass: "Come out of there! I’ll bust your ass!"

There are parks and pools. There’s a car culture, but we can still get around via MetroCard. And once it’s time to get back downtown, there’s a million black limo-cabs. Oh, and don’t forget that zoo and those bums in pinstripes.

Best Place for Orientals to Get Down
Forbidden City
212 Ave. A (13th St.), 212-598-0500

Everybody Wang Chung tonight. Johnny, the owner, used to be a chef at a Benihana, so he knows how to throw a party. The food and drinks at Forbidden City are much more sophisticated than at his previous employ, however, with sake–as just one example–served in proper box-shaped glasses on tumescent green plates. In this charged lounge bar, Asians and the people who love them get down as self-mocking kung-fu flicks play on a huge screen at the back, and best of all, you’d never know from the anonymous outside how truly swinging it is within.

Best Hiphop Album
The Ownerz, Gang Starr

Clip still full. We’ve been devotees of Guru and DJ Premier since we stepped into the arena in 1991. And 15 years after coming up, the odd couple from Boston and Texas is still reigning supreme and with class over the jokers, showing on The Ownerz that the patented Gang Starr formula is potent even after the group’s canonization and the duo’s personal domestication. Guru’s flow is as fine and semiconscious as ever, cutting down all fakers of the funk with Preem behind him, crafting too-good-to-be-true beats worthy of the legend.

Despite critical accolades, Gang Starr never hit the big, big, big time. Instead of trying to catch up to MTV bandwagons, they’ve held cupped palms over the flame of raw East Coast hiphop and produced full albums of material with minimal filler. No faux thug bullshit, no poppy beatscapes programmed to please the kids.

In The Ownerz, the Gang Starr ethos is alive and kicking in one of Premier’s trademark slap-you-awake interludes:

Yo, what the fuck is this shit y’all are listenin’ to nowadays on the radio, man? You call that shit hiphop?… All you DJs are letting the program directors handcuff you and sit there and tell you how to mix? You fuckin’ robots. Fuck y’all.

Few in the game have earned the right to spread this kind of fire like Premier. And we couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

Best Club Promoter
Rena Siwek
B.B. King Blues Club, 237 W. 42nd St. (betw. 7th & 8th Aves.), 212-997-4555

For love of the game. As a rule of thumb, we do our level best to steer clear of p.r. types. Like salesmen, public relations professionals are forever on the make–and it always comes at our expense. Unlike the salesmen, they work under a more obvious form of barter, usually initiating the relationship by handing something our way. Free tickets for us, for our visiting in-laws, a chance for our little brother to shake hands with the guy who impersonates David Lee Roth at the Van Halen tribute show. That’s when the fun stops. Once you’ve bitten from the carrot, you’re in debt, and the crafty p.r. pro has a memory like a collection agency.

We first spoke with B.B. King’s Rena Siwek a couple years back, and in the time since, we’ve done nothing but take, take and take some more. Advance tickets, last-minute tickets, special events–anything we ever need, we make out like bandits. Unlike her peers, she’s never asked for much in return. Seems that she actually enjoys promoting her club in the best possible light.

For being an absolute doll when, more often than not, we don’t deserve it, here’s a little reacharound to Rena, the Best Club Promoter in Manhattan, 2003.

Best Industrial Band
Side 3

Get bent, Trent. Do you like blood? How about latex? How about scary hard beats and hot death boys? If you answered yes to any of these questions then you’ll second our nomination of Side 3 as New York’s best industrial band. Not only do Al Voili and Matt Slagle look extremely yummy while tearing it up on stage (does this sound like a ym article yet?), but the music is vicious, dark and intense.

Their latest recording, Halfway Under, has an exciting moodiness, pure in emotion and about as raw in sound as can be achieved with electronic beats. As important as the music, though, is the stage show. More then two guys on a stage, Side 3 is a projection, literally, of images that reflect the emotion and energy of the music. We always look forward to their next performance.

Best CD Cover

Best Armchair Traveling
American Museum of Natural History
Central Park West (79th St.), 212-769-5100

The fauxs of Kilimanjaro. We’re always jonesing to travel, but our dayjob and cobwebby checkbook conspire to keep us stuck here for a bit. Whenever we need a little fix of flight, we head to the dioramas at the Natural History Museum.

Up the stairs, past the pompous statue of Teddy Roosevelt and into the galleries where real stuffed animals are set into cases depicting their natural environments. Sure, the big blue whale and the newly renovated Hall of Ocean Life are impressive, but for an afternoon of voyeuristic adventuring, we make a bee-line the mammals every time. With the lights kept so dim that the displays seem to glow, the shaggy musk ox flecked with snow and the gemsbok nibbling beardgrass draw us like moths.

Each diorama portrays a specific time and place, and the ceiling and back walls curve to evoke a sense of open space. The beavers aren’t just gnawing away in some random woods; they’re on a lake in Michigan in July, and the sun just set half an hour ago. The fake plants, hidden lights, geological murals and somnambulant animals in the landscapes replicate those of the natural world so obsessively that they become their own studies in scientific devotion. They become their own worlds.

Perhaps it is this otherworldly quality that gives us the feeling of having returned from far, far away when we emerge back onto Central Park West. We’re always startled by how a collection of stuffed animals in lit, painted boxes can trigger such palpable memories of places we’ve never visited. At least not yet.

Best Reason to Get Over Rock-Star Worship
I Am Trying to Break Your Heart

Put down that guitar, asshole. Most of us know that rock’s been dead for a long time now, but this documentary should’ve proven it to everyone else. (Dylan’s unintentionally hilarious Masked and Anonymous is the dark, dank soil shoveled onto rock’s coffin.) It’s helpful to watch the DVD version of I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco because of the band’s commentary track. There’s nervous laughter. There’s acquiescence to lead genius, Jeff Tweedy. There’s lots of mumbling stoner humor.

This shit is so over. You can see it in the way the members of Wilco casually gloss over the quiet, planned departure of former member Jay Bennett, the band’s creative loony who got too real, man. The remaining players reveal themselves as a bunch of yes-men pretending that yes-men don’t exist in their cool little world. No more messiahs for the messiah complex.

As the boomers slouch toward their wheelchairs, this type of rock star is dying. Which is great news for anyone who wants music without the suffocating weight of cultural "importance." The next generation of music fans are already so fragmented, so resistant to compartmentalization, that these false gods will never be heaved upon them, and they’ll understand that what’s cool to them may mean nothing to the kid next to them. And it won’t matter. Sounds like heaven.

Best Drug About to be Criminalized
Salvia Divinorum

Um, did you just see that? The first time we smoked salvia was a bit more than two years ago with a then-girlfriend. She’d just taken her first hits, to no effect; she reported feeling a little high, but there was no hallucinating, no "incredible five-minute trip," as her friend had described.

We’d been warned. Smoking salvia divinorum is a bit more complicated than smoking marijuana or hashish. First and foremost, use a butane lighter: The leaves must be incinerated quickly and completely, and that Zippo doesn’t put out enough heat. Second, use a bong or water pipe: The smoke must be inhaled immediately and held for 30 seconds, and the water provides a cooling mechanism.

Native American shamans have used salvia divinorum for years, though exactly how long is up for debate. Shaman healers living in the Oaxaca state of Mexico are called curanderos; in Mazatec they are called chotacine, which translates as "one who knows." According to the curanderos, they use it whenever they feel it necessary to travel into the supernatural world in order to suss information that eludes their corporeal selves. Uses include divination, diagnosis of sickness and disease, and even locating missing persons and objects. The leaves, which resemble their cousins in the mint family, are traditionally chewed and held in the mouth like tobacco or crushed into a juice.

Research shows it to be non-addictive, and users report no increased tolerance after repeated use. In fact, some salvia enthusiasts report an increased sensitivity after multiple uses. Presumably, their bodies have learned how to process the active ingredient, Salvinorin A, more efficiently and effectively.

Our companion tried two or three more times, yet still felt nothing more than lightheaded. We refilled the little glass bowl, hit it with the sharp blue flame and sucked in the cool, white smoke. Immediately, we felt something lurking on the edge of our awareness, something a bit scary, a bit exhilarating. We packed another bowl and lit it up and–

And like–that. We were in another world. The room disappeared in waves of concentric circles, like ripples in a pond. As we looked around, our bookshelf, couch, coffee table, dog…all faded away as the waves pushed over and past them, sweeping them out to an unseen sea.

While the salvia trip was more intense than any acid or mushrooms we’ve ever eaten, it only lasted a few minutes. The ripples slowed to a gentle throb, a pleasant heartbeat surging around us. Then, the pulsing slowed to a stop, the tide went out, and we were back in the living room.

For the next hour, we sat on the couch, silent and still, continuing to float and, after a bit, we retired to the bedroom and eventually fell asleep, a bit high, mellow but energized.

Four hours later, the phone rang. Her concerned mother, calling to inquire if we were all right. "Sure, sure, why?" we asked.

"Turn on the news. Two planes flew into the World Trade Center."

There was a mixed blessing of witnessing the second tower fall while under the lingering influence of the best hallucinogen we’ve ever tasted. On one hand, there was a dreamlike quality to the collapse, but on the other, we’ve had trouble processing it as a real event.

According to an article in USA Today on June 23, the FDA has started the process of criminalizing salvia divinorum, which is a crying shame. Salvia isn’t a joyriding drug that invites abuse. Between the near-ritual required to get the full effect and the debilitating intensity of the ride, it’s just not a casual indulgence.

While you still have the chance, visit sagewisdom.org and make a purchase. We recommend the enhanced leaves, and urge you to read the FAQ beforehand.

Best Nerd
Jim Testa

It made David Byrne rich, you know. We’re out on the Friday before Labor Day, depressed at the flood of office workers running out to an early start of their big three-day weekends. But our mood cheers once we find ourselves behind a fine specimen. He’s a pear-shaped, middle-management type, resplendent in cheap brown slacks and a short-sleeved J.C. Penney dress shirt. He’s waddling along awkwardly, arms sticking out at his sides, and we notice that one of those chubby appendages occasionally strikes out to punch at the air.

That’s when we see his headphones and the portable CD player stuffed into his front pocket. This guy is truly rocking out in his own disabled way. He even gets excited enough to briefly croak along in a dull monotone: "…the kids on the street…"

We love this guy. Problem is, are we laughing at a genuine retard? Have we discovered the next Wesley Willis?

When our hero turns a corner, we realize with a start–Hey! We know that guy! It’s Jersey Beat editor Jim Testa, rushing home from his day job at a Manhattan brokerage firm so he can write more articles that begin with phrases like, "If you thought the New Brunswick punk scene was dead…"

You go, Jim! Keep it real! The rock critic stereotype, that is.

Best Urban Comedy Show
Downtown Sunday Night at Boston Comedy Club
82 W. 3rd St. (betw. Thompson & Sullivan Sts.), 212-477-1000

Oh fine–black and Latino. Most comedy clubs save at least one night a week for their "urban" clientele. Of these shows, only one stands out: Downtown Sunday Night at Boston Comedy Club. Promoters Wil and Talent pack the club each week, present the top performers of the circuit and even take a moment before the show to admonish the crowd to not boo comedians they dislike. The gesture is nice, but largely unnecessary. The night we went, every comedian had the audience in stitches. If BET’s Comic View is a guilty pleasure, you should set aside a Sunday night see the real deal. But get there early. There’s a line around the block a half-hour before show time, and they don’t take reservations.

Best Seat on Opening Night
United Artists Battery Park Stadium 16
102 North End Ave. (betw. Vesey & West Sts.), 800-326-3264

Room with a view. Wanted to catch the sneak preview of Spy Kids 3D, but by the time you got to the front of the line they were all out of glasses? Made it into an eight o’clock showing of Sorority Boys on a Saturday night, but you were sitting so close to the door you couldn’t mix a martini unobserved and were forced to drink the gin? Tried to see Harry Potter II the first weekend, only to find that your plan to fake out the anglophiles by posing as Camilla Parker Bowles wouldn’t work because MoviePhone sold the shit out two hours before?

The answer to all these problems, and even a few more (like "Where to take your aunt from Des Moines who won’t be satisfied until she snaps a picture of the WTC site?"), is a little-frequented cinema in Battery Park City. Show up on opening night to see the latest Hannibal movie and you’ll still have time to go to the bathroom–plus get popcorn. (P.S.: Tell your aunt she’s a ghoul.)

Best Record Store Worth a Day Trip
Princeton Record Exchange
20 S. Tulane St. (Nassau St.), Princeton, NJ, 609-921-0881

You’ll drive past a Stewart’s Restaurant, too. Tired of sorting through the same $1 bins along St. Marks Place? Invest a little time in your el cheapo binges with a quick trip out to Princeton, NJ, where Princeton Record Exchange awaits the savvy consumer. It’s a simple trek by bus, car or train, averaging about one and a half hours from Manhattan.

It’s worth the trip, thanks to Princeton Record Exchange’s incredible selection of CDs at $4.99 and under, and they’ve got a wall of cheap ones that makes for a nice condemnation of the college kids’ taste down there in Jersey. A recent trip got us $1.99 copies of expensive imports from obscurities like Sandy Salisbury, Harpo and Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich. We also picked up sealed copies of the recent Barbara Manning and Amy Rigby for $2.99 each.

There’s also the usual selection of reliable rock and more, with an extensive LP section and reasonably priced new CDs. You won’t find a better selection of old porn CD-ROMs, either. The minimal cash output required to get to Princeton will pay off for any music fan. And the folks at Princeton Record Exchange make it easy, offering convenient instructions for getting there by train, bus or car (see prex.com). If you’re going during the week, we recommend the train or bus. The parking in Princeton makes Hoboken look spacious.

Best Concentration of Bad Taste
Galleria J. Antonio
47 Ave. A (betw. 3rd & 4th Sts.), 212-505-5512

Can we have another blackout please? Once a year, all the interior decorators in New York get together and vote on the worst lamp of the year. We suggest that they run down to Galleria J. Antonio to get a head start on the competition. If they don’t see a lamp worthy of the award, perhaps something else in here will lend inspiration. There are metal cats with mismatching colors connected somehow to hooks…for towels? For jackets? We don’t really know. There’s a violin serving as a lamp base, and the busy menorahs sit near even more hectic mezuzahs. Odd Job is one thing–those items are sold at a distributor’s loss, and it’s no secret that they’re the fruits of failed ventures–but these owners picked out this stuff specifically.

Best Literary Return from a Midlife Crisis
Hanif Kureishi

Better than buying a Hummer. You can’t just ask somebody not to write during their entire mid-life crisis–or can you? London author Hanif Kureishi busted out with the amazing Buddha of Suburbia, which became a stellar BBC movie, and wrote the screenplays for London Kills Me, Sammy and Rosie Get Laid and My Beautiful Laundrette. Then he wrote Intimacy, which might not have been a bad novel for others, but Kureishi wasted his time and talent describing his red and puffy wife, while dwelling on the younger woman he took up with. Julie Burchill slammed him in her Guardian column, and we were worried he’d lost it entirely.

Now he’s back with Gabriel’s Gift, about a washed-up rock musician who has a son with an artistic gift, a loving tribute to the potential creativity of youth. In this city of washed-up artists who just about always fail to bounce back–or bow out gracefully, both being tough tricks–consult Kureishi for inspiration on the middle-aged artist’s life.

Best Japanese Noise Band on a Local Label
Mono

Redemption songs. Yeah, Black Dice are pretty good. Secret Machines are stunning live. And we’ve heard of some band called Sonic Youth that people like too. But the best noise album ever released by a local label might just be Mono’s One Step More and You Die (out on Brooklyn’s Arena Rock records). This Japanese band goes from soft to loud, from slow to fast, from melancholic to triumphant with such grandeur that it makes your insides shake until you feel woozy. This album is relentlessly sad, relentlessly hopeful, relentlessly melodic, relentlessly chaotic, and it’s the kind of music that makes you want to save people.

Best Movie Theater
Regal Cinema’s New Roc City 18 & IMAX
33 Lecount Pl., New Rochelle (betw. Anderson and Main Sts.), 914-235-3737

Shove your 10 bucks. Honestly, is it even worth getting excited over that upcoming major-studio movie? You can catch Charlie’s Angels 2 fever or Seabiscuit mania, but the cure will be administered in a hospital full of idiots rustling candy wrappers and chatting away like they’re sitting in front of the world’s biggest television.

On the other hand, what if you had the world’s biggest television to yourself? On the Friday morning that the Latest Big Production is set to debut, head out to Grand Central Station and catch Metro-North’s New Haven line. Twenty minutes later, get off at the New Rochelle station. Go up the stairs that take you across the tracks, and make a right. Walk down North Ave., take another right at Anderson. You can’t miss the shining exterior of New Roc City, home of Regal Cinema’s New Roc City 18 multiplex.

The New Roc City mall is, in itself, an amazing idiocy. Built as the host of a vibrant downtown New Rochelle nightlife, the structure contains an arcade and an ice skating rink that are just about always deserted during the day. The same is true of the huge movie theater that anchors the structure. Regal Cinema spared no expense in giving New Rochelle the best in today’s movie-going experience: stadium seating, incredible sound, huge screens set in huge auditoriums. And, best of all, that splendid isolation.

The first Friday screening is usually at 11 or 11:30 a.m., and the few folks who were there for American Wedding on opening day enjoyed their own private screening room. There may have been another couple toward the front of the screen, but we couldn’t tell from our vantage point in the back. (They, too, seemed to appreciate the solitude, and kept their mouths shut.) At the same moment, some poor sap had paid much more than our $6.50 matinee price to see the same movie in a New York City theater surrounded by morons who hooted over the jokes (if you could call them that).

Riding off to New Roc City has evolved from last resort into planned excursion when it comes to opening weekends. Remember Charlton Heston watching Woodstock in The Omega Man? That’s us. And after the film, we’ve the opportunity to enjoy some of New Rochelle’s finest dining. You’ve never seen so many donut shops in one humble downtown.

Best Reason to Not Pledge to WNET
Charlie Rose

This rose stinks. Charlie Rose first got our goose when he got the composer of Annie Get Your Gun wrong. Since then, he’s become a wellspring of groaners. Whether the interview subject is an architect, author or journalist, rest assured that Rose has not looked at the building, read the book or opened the magazine.

Rose is a paradigm of ambition over intellect, and behind that Texas drawl lies the earnestness of the kiss-ass who sits in the last row, waiting until teacher has called on everyone else before he eagerly raises his hand and blurts out the wrong answer. For the easily fooled, his earnest demeanor, bullshit softballs ("So tell me: What were you thinking about when you did [FILL IN THE BLANK]?"), constantly furrowed brow, chin in hand and pencil at the ready convey singleness of mind.

Maybe these are the people who relish the yearly Barbara Walters pre-Oscar celebrity blowjobs. For the rest of us, Charlie Rose falls somewhere between Sam Champion’s weather report and an I Love Lucy rerun. He is television’s great flyover, a no-man’s-land for talking heads who would do anything.

Best Reason to Keep Downloading Music

Dirty deeds done retail. AC/DC has just been inducted into the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame, and it’s the night of their free concert for fans at the Roseland Ballroom. On our way to the show, we stop by the Tower Records at Lincoln Center. There, we see that the chain has decided to help The Most Consistent Band In The World truly "Celebrate The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame"–to quote the big display that we see as we enter the store.

Tower has thoughtfully put out copies of AC/DC’s Who Made Who and The Razor’s Edge on sale–for a mere $14.99. The display is conveniently located up front, so consumers won’t wander over to the racks. For if they did, an observant record buyer might notice that Epic is in the midst of a massive AC/DC reissue campaign.

Meaning: In about two weeks’ time, those $14.99 copies of Who Made Who and The Razor’s Edge will be rendered redundant by newly remastered editions. For that $15, fans will get booklets with new liner notes, complete track information, new photos and lots of special enhanced content.

AC/DC deserves to be rich as much as any other bunch of aged rockers. A major record retailer, however, shouldn’t be in such a hurry to rip off their customers. Nice try, Tower. It’s good to see that your bankruptcy problems aren’t strictly financial.

Best Old-Fart Punk Band Reunion
The Tuff Darts

Still getting it up. No one song has nailed a New Yorker’s complicated relationship to his city more accurately than the track "Fun City" off the Tuff Darts’ eponymous 1978 LP. Nobody can touch a chorus like, "I’m sick of the crap I gotta take in this town/If I didn’t love it I swear I’d burn it to the ground." Not Lou Reed, not Tom Verlaine, not the Ramones and definitely not the cream of the latest crop of New York bands. Their sound is best summed up as a wiseass combination of the New York Dolls and Cheap Trick with some bluesy riffing (you know, back when punk bands were allowed to know how to play).

The Tuff Darts dropped out of musical history, preserved only by obscurities like Amos Poe and Ivan Kral’s shaky b&w documentary Blank Generation and by old-schoolers like John Holmstrom and Hilly Kristal. That is, until they turned up at CBGB for a reunion gig earlier this year, which has since been followed by a string of other club dates.

Have we gone to see them? Dear lord, no, it might actually prove more depressing than seeing the Sex Pistols. Like learning your parents still fuck, it’s just nice to know they’re still able to do it.

Best Comeuppance
Matthew Barney vs. Kim’s Video

Clash of the titans. Bitching about the obnoxious attitude at the Kim’s stores is as storied a tradition as swapping apartment tales of horror. Fact is, the selection is great, the staff can be a nightmare.

Matthew Barney, artist and filmmaker, is clearly not a Kim’s fan. He took exception to the bootleg copies of his Cremaster cycle on the Kim’s Video shelves earlier this year. Protests from Barney’s lawyer (and/or his New York dealer, Barbara Gladstone, if you choose to believe an article in the New York Times) saw the tapes pulled from the shelves. While both parties deny that legal action is underway, rumor of a lawsuit against the chain’s owners persists.

Oh, the conundrum. On the one hand, fuck Matthew Barney, that bloated no-talent who’s more promotionist than artist. On the other hand, fuck Kim’s for every snot-nosed prick who slathers on the extra dose of attitude whenever we dare to inquire about a film not on the approved Cool List. What it comes down to, we suppose, is a battle between two institutions that deserve each other.

Best Live Reading & Performance Series
Beyond Words: Stories on Stage
Currently at Here Arts Space 145 6th Ave. (betw. Spring & Dominick Sts.), 212-647-0202

Put in a good word. We’ve spotted a few high-profile book agents at recent Beyond Words nights, an indication that this series is finally receiving a bit of well-deserved insider attention.

Beyond Words is one of the most worthwhile nights of live fiction and non-fiction that literapolis has to offer. Credit goes to the founder, producer and curator, Victoria C. Rowan, and her minions for sifting through hundreds of manuscript submissions to pull together once-monthly literary bills that are cohesive and compelling in a way that more expensive, exclusive and heavily promoted events are often not.

One doesn’t attend these evenings expecting to trade booze spittle with the likes of Salman Rushdie. The benefit afforded here–if that alone won’t suffice–is the opportunity to witness unspoiled talent on the ascent. Neither overly tweedy nor oppressively hip, the series showcases a lot of first-time novelists and authors along with what Rowan calls "worthy, but as-yet pre-published" writers. What we’ve witnessed are strong performances culled from a mix of disciplines–fiction, memoir and straight journalism–and drawn together by a particular theme.

Atmospherics make a big difference, too. A real stage, careful lighting and production and a brief singer-songwriter opener all seem to lend the series the right dose of formality and panache. Rowan’s been running this show for almost a decade. That she and the series have been thanked in half a dozen recent books suggests she’s well-suited to the role of talent curator. We bid continued success to Beyond Words. And to its producers: strength when the poetasters come knocking.

Best Floating Impresario
Ellie Covan of Dixon Place
258 Bowery (betw. Houston & Prince Sts.), 212-219-0736

Will work for steady home. Ellie Covan, the ukulele-playing doyenne of Dixon Place, spent a year as one of the moppets on Romper Room. That information goes a long way toward explaining the comfy chairs and playground atmosphere that’s been part of Dixon Place since its 1986 founding on 1st St. Seeing They Might Be Giants’ John Flansburgh perform a monologue in the persona of Ted Bundy is an evening we won’t soon forget.

A modicum of financial success allowed Dixon Place to move to a larger space on the Bowery, where it continued through most of the 1990s, before another move to a bona fide, if small, theater in the east 20s.

Earlier this year, Dixon Place vacated its digs at the Vineyard Theatre, after management tripled the rent, and found itself semi-sorta-homeless yet again. They moved back down to the Bowery while hunting for a larger permanent home, meanwhile staging events all around town with alacrity. (This summer’s partnership with HERE Arts Center in presenting the FUSE "celebration of queer culture" was in part a continuation of DP’s own long-running Hot! Festival; a success we hope will repeat.)

A deal has just closed on yet another address: a large space on Chrystie St., with construction due to begin soon on a professional lab theater, rehearsal space and lounge. Opening is slated for fall 2004.

Covan is quick to note that it hasn’t been entirely her baby for a long time. "Let me dispel that myth right now," she says. "While this was the reality for the first seven years the organization existed, the last 10 years have been possible because of the contributions of a number of dedicated individuals." Still, it’s her distinctive thumbprint that’s helped draw staff and audiences to Dixon Place for most of two decades.

The most vivid impression we have of Covan, though, is not of producer but of performer. One night on 1st St., during an impromptu evening celebrating Samuel Beckett’s birthday, Covan grabbed a flashlight and a bedsheet, doused the lights, lit up her lips and proceeded to give a credible performance of the mile-a-minute Mouth in Not I. Full of surprises, that girl.

Best Horror Movies
Green-Wood Cemetery
500 25th St. (5th Ave.), Brooklyn, 718-768-7300

…and the dead shall walk among the living. Back in our college days, someone gave a Halloween party in which everybody was instructed to dress as the thing they feared most. Naturally, most guests arrived as Ronald Reagan; we went as uninvited guests on acid. Point is, scary is subjective.

Every Saturday this autumn, scary, scary films will be shown at Green-Wood cemetery. We divide them into three categories: kiddie scares (Sleeping Beauty), camp scares (War of the Worlds) and classic scares (Citizen Kane). They’ve even screened Wizard of Oz, and wouldn’t you know it? The Wizard himself, Frank Morgan, is a permanent usher at this macabre movie palace. (Though we don’t suppose he did a Q&A after the flick.) Go to their website (green-wood.com) for the schedule and prices.

Best Funk History Lesson
Chris Haskett at Junno’s
64 Downing St. (betw. Varick & Bedford Sts.), 212-627-7995

Once upon a funk. Much like porn experts, true funk connoisseurs are hard to find. Sure, everyone says they’re into it, but how many people can actually name a quality porno film besides Debbie Does Dallas or Deep Throat. If you happen to be crawling around the West Village on a Tuesday night, swing by Junno’s and give a listen to DJ Linux. He is the funk equivalent of that fat bastard who worked behind the counter at 7-Eleven when you were growing up who knew the name of every woman in Screw. "Everyone’s an expert at something," he would often say while dripping cheese sauce from the nachos all over the magazines.

Normally, Junno’s is known for its karaoke night. On Tuesday, however, the joint plays host to this former Rollins Band guitarist who on a weekly basis gives patrons a crash course in the history of funk. Carefully balancing the obscure stuff against the heavyweights, Linux tests everyone’s funkstication. Can you tell the Bar Kays from Graham Central Station from Con Funk Shun?

At the same time, the guy has a knack for finding the thread between songs. If the art of Djing is keeping a flow, Linux knows how to make a lesser-known Gil Scott Heron fit in nicely between a track off Parliament’s Chocolate City and EU’s original version of "Da’ Butt." Hell, half the fun is just looking at the album covers from the golden age of collage art in the 1970s.

The nights don’t get mobbed, so you can actually sit at the bar, drink a cold beer, relax, bounce your head along and play funk jeopardy (for lack of a better analogy). It’s probably one of the best ways to get some new funk into your dusty collection.

Best Place to Catch Seven Soccer Games at Once
Inwood Hill Park
Dyckman Street, Inwood

No más futbol. Should you find yourself feeling miserable on a spring or summer afternoon, hop on the A train and make your way to Inwood Hill Park, way up on Manhattan’s tip. The acreage itself is hilly and gorgeous, and contains the last bit of indigenous forest in the borough. Our favorite reason to visit is for the plethora of futbol matches played on the park’s flatter land. The teams are almost uniformly Hispanic and broken down on nationalistic lines, as evidenced by the flags waving proudly from each side of the makeshift fields. Nowhere else so far north of the Rio Grande can you see Ecuador take on Mexico and witness firsthand the fervor of the fandom of the world’s most popular sport.

Due to limited space, the separate fields come very close to intruding on one another, and cheers for one game can often distract the players in another. Despite the very competitive nature of the matches, there is a good-natured vibe that hangs over the proceedings, assuring spectators and players alike that all will be well even if someone’s nose gets broken.

Best Stealth Band
Aerial Love Feed

Nowhere to be seen. It’s not just the slick demo covers featuring military jets, or that they have a tendency to turn out the stage lights at their shows, or the model Army helicopters filled with strobe lights. Four years ago, Interpol was opening up for Aerial Love Feed at CMJ. A few months back, A.L.F. was touring the same circuit as recent breakouts Stellastarr and Elefant. When they played their first-ever Bowery Ballroom gig (opening for the aforementioned breakout bands), we wrote the show up as a pick and didn’t even notice they were on the bill.

How does such a cool band achieve such spectacular invisibility? Guitarist John Kapp commented, "We approach off the radar, we hit hard and fast, and we’re gone before anyone figures out what happened. There are no contracts with defense companies or record labels to verify our existence."

Best Drunken Grope Session
Mehanata 416 B.C.
416 Broadway (Canal St.), 212-625-0981

Aka the Bulgarian bar. Everyone’s already heard about this place, and it’ll be a miracle if it’s still worth patronizing by the time we go to press. There was a time, a brief window at the beginning of the summer, when you could get awful juicy on a weeknight at Mehanata. Inside, it was a mass of flesh and drinks on a dark wooden dance floor, not unlike your cool uncle’s basement bar, where you could play dirty with passing-through, slutty Europeans. It was skeevy for both sexes, and that was half the fun. With only one room, everything was out in the open–including DJ Goro, who spun everything from traditional Bulgarian, Russian and Egyptian gypsy shags to Nirvana, Metallica and 50 Cent. Made us homesick for nightclubs we visited in second-world tourist traps filled with drug-peddling Eastern European new-nomad types.

Is it still hanging on? We’re afraid to find out.

Best Adult Filmmaker
Joe Gallant
Black Mirror Productions

Keeping it real–hard. Ever since the porn industry fled to California in the mid-70s, New York has produced only a handful of smut auteurs. Our favorite is Joe Gallant, a former sound designer for CBS’ The Guiding Light and porn director and star since September 2000. His work is hard to categorize. The words "gonzo," "fetish" and "amateur" come to mind, but we prefer "weird." Lucy Lucy Slut Goddess and Wild in the Streets, for example, contain traditional guy/girl sex, lesbian sex, peeing and several scenes of giggling starlets creating Jackson Pollock-style canvases by shooting paint from their asses.

It’s all a bit bizarre, yes, but never coercive or violent–the girls seem to be enjoying themselves. The sets are the back alleys and crack hotels of Hell’s Kitchen, and there’s a kind of pre-Giuliani, anything-goes New York esthetic, probably born of Joe’s years in the punk scene of the 1970s. Perhaps his work is a deranged homage to the era of heroin chic, race riots and sexual abandon.

The porn establishment seems to be taking notice. This year the Adult Video News awarded Black Mirror a Best Picture (Pro-Am/Amateur) for Times Square Trash Volume 2. And although we’d prefer less of the butt-squirt stuff, we’ll take Joe’s homegrown crew of freaks doing strange things they love over the San Fernando Valley’s silicone Barbie dolls faking pleasure in exchange for a check. The back cover of Bong Water Butt Babes reads "RELENTLESS XXX FILTH, MADE WITH LOVE IN NYC." We couldn’t have said it better.

Best Down-and-Dirty Comedy Club
The Comedy Cellar
117 MacDougal St. (betw. Bleecker & W. 3rd Sts.),. 212-254-3480

Mistress Belly Laughs’ Dungeon is open. It’s dark, it’s crowded, the bathrooms stink, and owner Manny Dworman hasn’t changed the line-up since Seinfeld was doing beer commercials on the radio. But with regulars like Colin Quinn, Dave Attel and Greg Giraldo–not to mention frequent drop-ins by Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld and Dave Chappelle–who cares? The space crackles with energy, the comedians are hilarious, and somehow the Middle Eastern cuisine isn’t half bad.

The Comedy Cellar is also the only Manhattan club that never supplements its regular line-up with amateur "bringer" comedians. This means that on a Monday night, you’re going to see a completely professional line-up, not three professionals plus 10 to 20 amateurs whose friends are taking up all the seats and laughing a little too loudly at the jokes you heard from Bill Hicks a decade ago.

Be warned. The comedians get dirtier and more aggressive as the night wears on. Late-night visitors should request a seat in the rear or be ready to take some abuse. And another tip: Go to the club’s website for offers on free admission.

Best Unsigned Local Band
Bamboo Kids

We are the wicker men. Dwight Weeks is on stage at the Continental, and he has something to say: "I’d rather be in Iowa City playing for a bunch of redneck motherfuckers who aren’t afraid to have fun at a rock ’n’ roll show than for you cool fuckers in New York City!"

Granted, every current NYC rocker has a similar anti-clubber spiel, but the hardworking Bamboo Kids have just come off touring the Midwest and South, so at least they’re speaking from experience.

They’re also one of the few local acts sincerely looking to redeem the local rock scene. The Bamboo Kids knock out a goofy hard rock sound worthy of the Replacements–without, that is, the tinny lack of discipline that ultimately made Paul Westerberg a forgettable figure outside of a certain age group (and you know who you are). In contrast, this humble trio diligently rips off some of America’s best-selling artists in their bid to create a bluesy pop underground.

Nobody can accuse them of being calculated, either. They’ve garnered some success overseas, but these lovable goofballs can’t quite manage their sense of ambition. For example, we can’t tell you the title of their overseas debut CD. They’ve been promising to send us a copy for about four months now, and just can’t seem to get around to it. To be fair, they were kind of busy the past few weeks getting ready to tour Europe. Maybe they’ll die over there and really become legendary.

Best Place to Take Out-of-Town Parents
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
1000 Washington Ave. (Carroll Pl.), 718-623-7200

You guys like plants, right? Your folks live down south in Tuscaloosa or out West in Cheyenne? Want to make them feel like maybe mean ol’ nasty New York isn’t such a crazy bad hectic place after all? Cozy on over to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden while it’s still open. Get some nice fresh air and amble through the very zen Japanese garden, one of the first built in the country. Have a picnic or pick a coffee bean from the Tropical Pavilion. The Botanic Garden is huge, diverse and easily accessible.

Mom won’t bitch about urban spiritual and moral decay for at least another week, and you won’t feel the inevitable dread of going to Ground Zero or waiting in a three-hour line for Lady Liberty.

Best Place to Be a Voyeur
Barneys Warehouse Sale
236 W. 18th St. (betw. 7th & 8th Aves.), 212-593-7800

All along the watchtower. We thought it was a mirage, or a web-porn shoot: 20 sexy young women disrobing in the middle of a clothing store. Then we went downstairs and saw middle-aged men doing the same thing. And then, it dawned on us: At the fashion world’s most famous discount sale, there are no changing rooms, prompting the confident to try on their Prada and Marc Jacobs out in the open. Which gives the rest of us a chance to witness some fabulous nakedness.

Our advice? Go with a friend of the opposite sex, pretend you’re gay and enjoy the sights. Of course you could just go to Scores, but at Barneys there’s no cover charge and the breasts are usually real. Unfortunately so are the beer bellies of the decidedly less attractive male customers, so we suggest staying upstairs in the women’s section.

Best Place to Pick Up
A Muscle Sissy in Rehab
Big Cup, 228 8th Ave. (betw. 21st & 22nd Sts.), 212-206-0059

Is that steamed milk, or are you just happy to see me? What Food Bar is to, well, food, Big Cup is to coffee: It’s the ür-Chelsea hangout. Dodging the gaggle of outer-borough kids who seem to have decamped from lower Christopher St. and made this stretch of sidewalk their new playground, you enter what could easily pass for the standard New York coffee shop on the set of any sitcom, or a pseudo-hipster hangout on Franklin Ave. high in the Hollywood Hills (which, come to think about it, is pretty much the same thing).

There’s the high counter, with requisite pastries encased in glass. But you can ignore those–everyone else here does. This is Chelsea, after all. Buy an overpriced mug of not-at-all-bad coffee and find a seat amidst the cushions. Grab one of the gay rags racked up in the corner. And wait. Soon enough, you’ll be surrounded by a gaggle of men all dressed in wife beaters, cargo shorts and baseball caps, each nursing a mug. Because this is the one Chelsea pick-up bar without alcohol, chances are good that potential future ex-boyfriend sitting next to you is resisting the temptation of local watering holes like xl or g.

Best opening line: Didn’t I see you at an AA meeting at the Center?

Second-best opening line: Didn’t I see you at a CmA meeting at the Center? (NA works well, too.)

Whether he’s swearing off booze or tina, chances are good that Johnny Sobersides probably still hasn’t sworn off a quickie.

A Crystal Meth Freak
M4M4Sex.com, early Monday morning

Speed thrills. Quick, answer this question: What does P&P mean? Any gay man in New York City knows that P&P stands for "party and play," and by "party," we don’t mean charades and Chex Mix.

Question #2: When I say "Tina," you say...? If you answer "Louise," rent the DVD of last season’s Queer as Folk, in which a character gets strung out on Miss Tina.

Crystal meth might have begun with Midwestern truck drivers and harried housewives, and yes, we got the tail end of the Left Coast’s tweaker epidemic. But when Miss Tina arrived, she hit New York hard. Viagra’s counter-effects on "crystal dick" certainly helped it along. Call us old-fashioned, but all that "KissMeNoLickMyEarNoSuckMyDickNoLetMeSuckYourDick" is just too much work. We prefer long, languorous sessions of lovemaking to sketchy groping. None of this two-hours-of-foreplay-and-let’s-see-who-else-is-online stuff for us.

For 275,000 men, M4M4Sex.com is the virtual bathhouse of choice. Founded in 1999 here in New York, the site exploded to include 23 cities worldwide and became an international phenomenon. But this is the hometown, where its heart (among other body parts) still beats most rapidly. The beauty of M4M (a subscriber service) is simple: Unlike AOL, where people can hide behind the euphemisms of "AOLspeak" ("stocky" = fat; "football build" = obese; "rugby build" = morbidly obese) and "gif hunters" collect photos without sending theirs (or worse, sending someone else’s), M4M requires full disclosure. There’s a rated-G gallery to start with; if you’re interested, and the other guy (or, as likely, guys) responds, you go on to the X-rated gallery behind the virtual partition. Barring the off-chance that you’ll run into your boyfriend (oops), your boss (double oops) or your mother’s new spouse (umm), you stand a good chance of scoring.

The site really does require full disclosure–in every sense. If the picture says Antonio Banderas and the guy at the door turns out to be Bruce Vilanch, he’s kicked off the service. The end of the weekend, when the bars are closed and desperation sets in, opens up all sorts of possibilities for action. And after a weekend of tweaking, expect them to do the L.A. thing and dive for bottom. Just beware: By early Monday morning, they’ve probably already gone through their stash.

An Out-of-Shape Italian from New Jersey
SBNY
50 W. 17th St. (betw. 6th & 5th Aves.), 212-691-0073